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JOURNEY AND METAMORPHOSIS-TRAINING TO INDUCTION:

AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT IN TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CREATION OF A TEACHER INDUCTION PROGRAM

An Action Research Project

By

CHRISTOPHER WILLIAM BIGENHO

Submitted to the Graduate School of Education and Psychology

Pepperdine University

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

July 2005

Major Subject: Educational Technology

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ABSTRACT

This report is based on the findings of action research conducted at Greenhill School, an independent pre-k to 12 college preparatory school in the Dallas Texas area. The research focused on the training and development aspect of my practice as the director of technology at the school. There were three distinct cycles of action research starting with a technology skills assessment survey of the current faculty and staff.

The results of this survey refocused each of the additional cycles with the second being an attempt to increase reflective practice of the faculty by formalizing a reflective process utilizing reflective prompts and establishing a means for faculty to engage in dialogue in an on-line forum. The third cycle emphasized a shift in training methodologies used in delivering technology training to the faculty. Rather than focusing on the development of skills, the workshops were structured so that the technology content was situated in the context of the practice of a teacher. Pedagogy of teaching with technology was modeled during these workshops utilizing learning theories as the content of study to be delivered. The emphasis was taken off the development of specific technology skills allowing faculty to experience learning with technology.

The results of these three cycles have allowed me to formulate two additional cycles as follow-up as well as the development and introduction of a new teacher induction program at the school. The teacher induction program will focus on the development of a community of practice with the focus being on the improvement of teaching practices while reflecting on current learning theories. The technology training is incorporated into the delivery and facilitation of the induction program. Teachers will experience learning with technology.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Here I would like to take a moment to thank those that have helped me achieve this moment. First I would like to thank my fiancé and best friend Rhonda Blackburn for her encouragement and patience. Thank you for understanding and encouraging me along the way. I look forward to our next educational adventure together.

I would also like to thank the incredible individuals that comprise the Super Seven Cadre. The honesty, vision, encouragement and support from this group have been incredible. I am honored to be counted among this group: Scott Allen, Karen Connaghan, Tara Cowe-Spigai, Jim Kenney, Matt Midura, Bernard Burchette, Michael Dulay, Karen Elinich, Christain Greer, Kari Hoien, Xing King, Brooke Molnar, Jason Quevedo, Michael Sweeney and Susan Tiss. Thank you for all of your comments and the time sharing ideas via IM and Tapped In. This group is the best.

Margaret Riel needs a special mention. She has been an incredible inspiration throughout this entire project. Thank you for your guidance and your wisdom. You were very gracious in your readings of this work and I appreciate your insight. You have been a force of change within me.

Vince Mikulski, thank you for allowing me to bounce ideas around and Mark Crotty for reading some of my work and being my reality check on this project. Our discussions have been very encouraging.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER / PAGE
I / Introduction………………………………………………….. / 1
II / Review of literature………………………………………….. / 5
III / CYCLE 1: Identification of technology skills……………….. / 13
IV / CYCLE 2: Increasing reflective practice……………………. / 29
V / CYCLE 3: Professional development situated in the context of practice……………………………………………………. / 46
VI / Final reflections and future actions………………………….. / 59
References…………………………………………………… / 78

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Background

It has been said that you teach as you were taught. Since most of today’s educators went through school before computers were in school or when educational technology was in its infancy, it comes as no surprise that many teachers struggle with effective implementation of technology in their teaching. How can I change this trend at my school?

The literature discusses training situated in the context of teaching. Much has also been written on new teacher induction and its ability to increase teacher retention and its effectiveness in preparing teachers to succeed in their new school.

In this report, I explore new training possibilities through the completion of 3 cycles of action research. Action research is the systematic, reflective study of oneself and their environment. The researcher examines their work and looks for opportunities to improve. As stakeholders, they propose actions to help them improve their practice and reflect to develop the next cycle. This action research was conducted at Greenhill School where I serve as director of technology.

Greenhill School serves approximately 1250 students from ages 3 through the 12th grade with approximately 200 faculty and staff.

When Greenhill made the commitment to technology, a technology plan was developed establishing clear goals and a realistic strategy for using telecommunications and information technology to improve education. Greenhill School's Technology Plan was developed as a result of school-wide strategic planning which identified technology in education as one of the key capabilities the school must have in order to be successful in its mission.

In 1996-97, the school installed a network infrastructure and developed the Technology Department. At the start of this program, the entire employee base was required to take technology classes to satisfy a mandatory technology training requirement of 10 or more hours per year. This worked well in the beginning. Training was on basic use of the technology as most faculty and staff were new to technology.

E-mail and the Internet were new concepts to most Greenhill employees. Very few had any knowledge of Microsoft Office or teaching with technology. These early classes focused on the basics. Most of the workshops were 1-2 sessions long and averaged 1.5 to 2 hours each session. The classes were held at the end of the work day. These workshops seemed to work well for the initial introduction of technology at Greenhill School.

In 1999, I moved from the classroom to become the director of technology. During that first year, I continued offering workshops following the same format. However, I spent considerable time analyzing the effectiveness of these workshops and determined that we needed to make changes.

In the year 2000, we started to offer more intense workshops in the form of full day (8 hour) sessions offered on weekends and in successive blocks at the end of the work day. These sessions were conducted using the corporate model for applications training and were offered in beginning Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. The faculty and staff that attended these sessions made measurable changes in their technology knowledge and the classes were structured to fit their immediate needs. All examples and exercises were based on the use of the application in their workplace.

We also began an intensive program of one-on-one training with faculty and staff. This allowed us to focus the training on the specific needs of the individual. While we were able to continue addressing the basic needs of the faculty, we added greater emphasis to integration of the technology into the classroom and implemented “just in time” training opportunities. We identified our web is a great resource for developing greater integration and began to work with faculty to develop their own web pages.

New tools for developing and delivering technology training were employed. Tech tips and clips- short instructional “white papers” and video clips were developed for training purposes on common skills that seemed to be lacking in large numbers of the employee population. We also used these tools to deliver instruction on new technology as it arrived at Greenhill School.

We have also offered week long training workshops for teachers specific to integration of technology into the classroom. These have been very successful in the past and should continue in the future.

Statement of the Problem

There has never really been an analysis on the technology skills of the faculty and staff of Greenhill School and as such, the training programs are often driven by the types of calls that were received and logged at the help desk.

While there have been have had continuous training opportunities at Greenhill School, the faculty and staff that currently take advantage of these opportunities are small in number. Most faculty and staff have learned the basics during the initial introduction of technology at Greenhill School but have failed to continue to grow. The pool of faculty and staff that are actively involved in technology professional development has declined. At the same time, we have a turn-over rate in excess of 30 employees each year. There have been several faculty members that had been very active in technology professional development in the past that have moved on to other schools.

Of these 30 plus new employees, 10 of them are fellow positions which are one year assignments. All of these new employees enter the community August of each year. These employees usually include a mix of faculty, staff and fellows.

These employees are given about 3 hours of training serving as an introduction to technology services at Greenhill School. This introduction takes place two weeks prior to the start of school and is divided between two days. While we have considerable training opportunities for employees at Greenhill, there is no formal evaluation and tracking program related to training. New employees are encouraged to make arrangements for training as they see the needs. However, this seldom happens.

What follows is a discussion of related literature and the results of 3 action research cycles. Much has changed since the start of this project and plans are in the works for additional change and new action cycles. These changes in training practices are starting to create positive change in the use of technology in the classroom as well as improving my relationships with the faculty and staff.

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CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Need for Teacher Technology Training

Today, more than ever, we are living in a technological world, a digital world. A freshman in college today is the first of a generation of digital natives that has grown up in world of interactive and communication technology. However, teachers of these digital natives are more like digital immigrants. When immigrants learn a new language, they generally have some type of accent. As immigrants, teachers don’t think and speak like their students (Prensky, 2001). Prensky feels that “students today process information differently than their predecessors” (2001). He points to work by a doctor at Baylor College of Medicine who feels that the differences go far beyond the “differences in processing, their brains may be fundamentally different because of these experiences” (2001). This might imply that we need to entertain the possibility of these differences and alter our teaching methods to increase the probability of success for students who are comfortable learning in a digital world.

Continually evolving technology constantly presents teachers with additional challenges requiring them to craft new uses in their practice. Historically, teachers have been slow to embrace the use of technology as an element of change in their practice. Change as a result of technology has created problems related to teacher training, retraining and curriculum integration (Westbrook, 1993 as cited by Valovich, 1996). The fact that computers were accessible to students before teachers had the opportunity to master them places teachers at a disadvantage (Valovich, 1996). This again highlights the difference between the digital native and the digital immigrant.

The question then becomes how to best help teachers develop their technology skills so they are comfortable enough to effectively utilize technology with their instruction (Valovich, 1996). Technology professional development in schools should be context based rather than generic. Training is often generic in nature and focused on basic application skills (Valovich, 1996). It has been found that effective training for teachers utilizes modalities that link the skills to classrooms and instruction rather than software specific skills (Meehan, 2002; Anderson, 2002).

With a teacher’s time being a premium, any trainer must be cogent of teacher’s time commitments. This means that programs that are able to provide “just in time” and “on demand” (Meehan, 2002; Anderson, 2002) training may be more effective with the more generic types of training.

Teacher Retention

Teaching is recognized by many as a difficult profession with limited financial rewards. As a profession, “teaching has also traditionally been characterized as an occupation with high levels of attrition, especially among beginners (Grissmer & Kirby 1987, 1997, cited in Ingersol & Smith, 2004). Fifty percent of new teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years of entering (Huling-Austin 1990; Ingersoll & Smith, 2003, cited in Ingersoll & Smith, 2004; Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 2003, cited in Wong, 2004).

While a teachers’ education focuses on the construction of knowledge in some subject area, it has little to do with the profession of teaching. So what makes a teacher and how do you retain them in the profession? Teachers are developed over a period of years through structured professional development programs (Wong, 2004). One way to accomplish this is through a well structured induction program.

Teacher Induction Program

Induction is a system wide, coherent, comprehensive training and support process that continues for 2 to 3 years then seamlessly becomes part of the lifelong professional development program of the district to keep new teachers teaching and improving toward increasing their effectiveness (Wong, 2004, p. 42).

Induction programs are often for all new employees to a school whether it is their first year teaching or have been teaching for years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2004).

There is often confusion regarding the structure of an induction program. While mentoring is an important part of induction, it is not in itself induction. Mentoring can be described as an action whereas induction is more process oriented (Wong, 2004). Mentoring by itself has not been shown to be very effective. Wong writes, “Principals and new teachers rated mentoring the least effective way to help new teachers” (2004). In contrast, a well designed induction program has the ability to increase retention of new teachers to the profession and develop expertise. You could describe induction as a comprehensive professional development program where “new and veteran teachers interact through collaboration” (Wong, 2004). They are or can develop into a community of practice where “apprentices, young masters with apprentices and masters some of whose apprentices have themselves become masters” [practice] (Lave & Wenger, 2003).